Vancouver’s Hiive changes name to Clarity as private stock marketplace plans expansion 

The Hiive Company Ltd. became one of Canada’s largest and fastest-growing private technology companies by creating a marketplace for shares in private technology companies. Now it wants to establish itself as the most credible player in a space that lacks transparency.

On Tuesday, the Vancouver startup is changing its name to Clarity Group Inc. and expanding its offerings to appeal to institutional investors. It’s using the new name as a rallying cry to counter the reputation of private-share marketplaces as fragmented, lacking available information, illiquid and difficult to navigate.

“The rebrand to Clarity is related to the perception that this market operates through backroom deals and opaque access,” chief executive officer Sim Desai said in an interview. “We feel that our platform and our business is a response to that challenge.”

The pre-initial public offering market has grown rapidly as many tech companies have stayed private for much longer than their predecessors, achieving valuations sometimes into the hundreds of billions of dollars.

In response, investors and employees have sought to sell to eager buyers through secondary deals. Clarity, Nasdaq Inc. spinoff Nasdaq Private Market LLC (NPM), EquityZen, Forge Global and others have established marketplaces to handle the transactions. There were US$106-billion of secondaries in 2025 for venture capital-backed company shares, according to Pitchbook, compared to US$120-million of public listing transactions.

Mr. Desai, a former management director with secondary trading advisor Setter Capital, co-founded the company with his wife, chief operating officer Sarah Huggins, a former litigator, and two others. They launched their marketplace in spring 2022. It facilitated US$300-million of trades in 2023, rising to US$2.2-billion last year and US$2.8-billion in the first eight months of this year. The 200-person company expects revenues this year to surpass US$100-million. In 2025 it raised capital through its platform; a recent secondary valued Clarity at US$850-million.

Unlike public markets such as the Toronto Stock Exchange, private markets lack industry-wide standards for how share transfer information is provided, received or processed. Each company has its own transfer rules, documentation requirements and approval processes. Exchanges such as Clarity standardize the process, while providing centralized venues to price and transact.

Clarity charges fees to sellers priced as a percentage of deal sizes. Its market is open to accredited investors in Canada and the U.S. and qualified purchasers in the U.S. with $5-milion in liquid assets. The minimum transaction size is US$25,000.

But there are challenges. Issuers don’t have to issue regular detailed financial information like their public peers except to board members and select investors. Some issuers, including Anthropic and OpenAI, have tried to limit trading on private platforms, seeking to control who owns their shares. Anthropic this year warned investors they aren’t authorized to trade its stock on five platforms, including Hiive, and if they do those transactions will be considered void.

Clarity, a U.S. Securities Exchange Commission-registered broker-dealer and alternative trading system, says it operates within established compliance frameworks and shareholder agreements, and due to its regulatory standards had rejected 70 per cent of requests to list special-purpose vehicles that own shares in specific companies. The platform doesn’t facilitate share transfers without an issuer’s approval. Clarity said it has 147 issuers that use its platform, including cryptocurrency exchange operator Kraken, as well as 95 per cent of “tier-1” venture capital firms.

NPM, meanwhile, sued Clarity this year alleging patent infringement, which Mr. Desai called a “baseless, frivolous claim designed only for one purpose: to stifle competition and tarnish and attack our reputation.” Clarity is defending the claim and seeking to invalidate the patent granted in March by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to NPM for its platform.

As part of its rebrand, Clarity is offering a new funds marketplace for investors to find potential investments and access a resale market for existing private capital fund interests. It’s offering information on pricing, supply, demand and company valuations to facilitate buying and selling decisions. It is also enabling large investors to buy smaller positions from individual holders anonymously to avoid signaling their interest, and offering a portfolio management feature for investors to track their private holdings.

“There’s a tension” between reluctant issuers and keen secondary participants, said Vancouver startup financier Boris Wertz, whose Version One Ventures has used Clarity. He said the lack of information available to many private investors is a limiting factor but “the direction is so clear, with demand for these hot private companies getting larger and larger, that outweighs anything that will hold this market back.”